Nekton is a pre-seed deep tech venture designing autonomous fleets of underwater and surface vehicles to monitor, map, and protect the world's oceans — at a scale and cost no human vessel can match.
Climate change, deep-sea mining, and overfishing are accelerating in parallel. The tools we have were not built for this moment.
Remote sensing gives us surface temperature and colour. Everything below remains invisible — and that's where the crisis lives.
A single research cruise costs hundreds of thousands of euros. Surveys cover tiny fractions of ocean area, months apart.
50% of the world's reefs have been lost since 1950. Most bleaching events are detected weeks after they begin.
The ocean absorbs 30% of human CO₂. We're building a carbon credit market on top of modelled guesswork, not real data.
Four integrated systems, designed from the ground up to work together as a living network.
Autonomous surface vehicles acting as communications hubs and solar charging stations for the underwater fleet. Wind- and wave-harvesting for indefinite endurance.
ASV PlatformSwarm-capable AUVs for shallow water monitoring. Deployable in coordinated groups, sharing data in real time. Starting point: coral reef health tracking.
AUV · Swarm · MVPLong-endurance vehicles for seafloor mapping, thermal vent research, and carbon sequestration monitoring. Target depth: 6,000m.
AUV · Phase 2The software brain. Fleet telemetry aggregation, real-time visualisation, and predictive analytics — delivered as SaaS to institutions, agencies, and governments. This is where recurring revenue lives.
SaaS · Recurring RevenueNekton targets overlapping verticals — each addressable independently, all served by the same autonomous fleet.
Defence and coast guard agencies need persistent, low-cost ocean monitoring at scale. AUV fleets are increasingly central to naval strategy.
University marine departments and environmental agencies are the natural early partners — credibility, test sites, and grant funding access.
Carbon credit buyers need verified sequestration data. The ocean absorbs 30% of global CO₂. Nekton can provide the measurement layer this market is missing.
Offshore wind and oil & gas operators spend heavily on subsea inspection. Autonomous fleets can reduce cost and deployment time dramatically.
A two-layer model with clear recurring revenue upside.
AUV and ASV units sold or leased to research institutions, government agencies, and offshore operators. High-margin hardware with proprietary edge AI onboard.
Fleet telemetry, data visualisation, and predictive analytics delivered as a subscription. Sold to every hardware customer plus standalone data buyers.
Environmental datasets contributed to public research — and licensed to commercial buyers: shipping, insurance, climate modelling firms. Open data with a commercial layer on top.
The conditions for Nekton didn't exist five years ago. They exist now.
Government ocean monitoring spend is rising rapidly. EU, US, and APAC agencies have earmarked billions for marine observation infrastructure through 2030.
Compact, low-power inference hardware has reached a point where real-time decision-making underwater is no longer a research project — it's an engineering project.
Voluntary carbon credit markets are under regulatory pressure to verify sequestration. Ocean sinks are the largest untapped verification opportunity.
Europe alone is building 300GW of offshore wind by 2030. Every installation needs subsea inspection. The AUV market is growing 15–20% per year on this alone.
We're early — intentionally. We're looking for the right first investors, co-founders, and research partners before we build, not after. Here's the path.
Defining the product architecture, identifying co-founders and advisors with marine engineering and robotics backgrounds, securing university research partnerships for test access.
A well-understood problem, visible impact, and grant-fundable. University marine biology partnership for credibility and test sites. First version of Nekton OS running in parallel.
First commercial revenue. Ocean carbon sink verification provides the business model proof point — repeatable, contract-based, regulatory tailwind.
Multi-product fleet. Government and naval contracts. Nekton OS as a standalone data platform for institutions that don't own hardware. The infrastructure layer for ocean intelligence.
"The ocean is the planet's life support system.
We're building the nervous system it never had."
Nekton sits at the intersection of deep tech credibility and environmental mission — where talent, capital, and government contracts are increasingly flowing. The name is the thesis: active, self-directed movement through a complex environment. Not passive data collection. Intelligent navigation.
We're in early conversations with investors, potential co-founders, and research partners. If any of that is you — reach out. We'll send you the deck and find time to connect.
We'll be in touch within 48 hours — deck included.